Enhanced Alpha – We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch. The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!

I can imagine European and Australian gamers foaming at the mouth "EU AND OCEANIC SERVERS EARLIER. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY"

Originally Posted by Murdos

If X is % better then Y, Y is bad. I hate that concept with the searing, burning unfathomable energy of a collapsing supergiant.

I never said im not going to play. If it comes out and is everything it says it will be i will play it. But im not going to be suckered into the current scheme of throwing hundreds of dollars for exclusive ingame ships only to watch goal after goal of money raised be met and the time after time the goal be raised. Specially not with a game thats 2 years out at the least. With the gaming industrys track record as of recent it could get shut down next week.

They need to scale this shit up alot otherwise these will be childrens ships and an absolute joke.

To give you a better idea only 2 of those ships are large than a football field.

Only 1.6km? Imperial escorts are around 3km in the 40k universe and their battleships top out at around 8km. Star Wars ships must be children's ships and an absolute joke.

Or we have no way of rating what actually is a "big" ship in the context of sci-fi, because it's all made up out of space magic and popular tropes. However unless there's something special about the space magic that magnifies the effectiveness of larger ships somehow (the rarity of Navigators in both 40k and Dune make large ships a sound idea) you're better off with multiple smaller craft that divide the assets and allow attack from multiple vectors, rather than concentrating so much resources into one big, slow-moving target.

They need to scale this shit up alot otherwise these will be childrens ships and an absolute joke.

To give you a better idea only 2 of those ships are large than a football field.

That's how big the ships are in the SC universe. Deal with it. I don't see why you're making such a big deal out of the size of the ships. I don't know about you, but I'm not looking at piloting a ship that I'm going to constantly hire a AI crew of 100+ just to fly it. From what we're told the Bengal carrier crews up to 760 people. That's 760 people or AI to keep the ship crewed to optimal settings. Not including enough pilots for the dozens of ships that it can carry. This is the size that Chris Roberts has decided that he wants his universe to be. If you want to make a game with 8km long destroyers and carriers then be my guest, but that's not what Chris wants his game to be like. Just because X/Y/Z other sci-fi universes have massively large ships doesn't mean that his game has to. Even at the smaller scale that Chris has chosen requires multiple crew to fully many these ships. Increase that by a few factors and now you're back to requiring a few dozen players or AI to make a ship run optimally. Why make the standard transportation for everyone a bus when a car is more than suitable? Also, you fail to understand that we've seen a very limited amount of ships. There's going to be another 30-40 ships at release that we haven't even seen concept art on. I'm sure there will be a more broad range of different types of ships to accommodate all play styles, but I'm certain that it's going to stay within the current scale range that we're seeing.

Also Chris Roberts has stated multiple times that after the game releases that you won't be able to purchase ships anymore. You'll buy one version of the game that will give you access to the game and that's it. If you want to spend a little extra money on the side for some very small in game currency then you can, however the amount that you can buy is limited each month and from what we can tell isn't a whole lot. Right now they're averaging anywhere from $100-200k pledged per day with just average ships being available. When they introduce some limited edition ships such as the gladiator or retaliator that we saw unveiled a few weekends ago they managed $1.4m within 2 days. People are more than willing to shell out a little more for a game that they're anticipating. Also for those that don't keep up with the Wingman's Hangar every week and don't read all of the news posts, the company is constantly expanding with new contractors added every week. They recently just added an entire division to work on SQ42 which includes Robert's brother Erin and his team who worked with Chris on titles such as Wing Commander and Privateer.

Only 1.6km? Imperial escorts are around 3km in the 40k universe and their battleships top out at around 8km. Star Wars ships must be children's ships and an absolute joke.

Or we have no way of rating what actually is a "big" ship in the context of sci-fi, because it's all made up out of space magic and popular tropes. However unless there's something special about the space magic that magnifies the effectiveness of larger ships somehow (the rarity of Navigators in both 40k and Dune make large ships a sound idea) you're better off with multiple smaller craft that divide the assets and allow attack from multiple vectors, rather than concentrating so much resources into one big, slow-moving target.

Also Chris Roberts has stated multiple times that after the game releases that you won't be able to purchase ships anymore. You'll buy one version of the game that will give you access to the game and that's it. If you want to spend a little extra money on the side for some very small in game currency then you can, however the amount that you can buy is limited each month and from what we can tell isn't a whole lot.

While if he sticks to that it will be nice i highly doubt it will. Chris allready has one peice of vaporware underhis belt and tbh i can see this turning into another. Sorry but with the way the gaming economy has been going in the past years i wouldnt hold my breath for a release in under a year and strong possibility of 2 years. How long has it been since the new RB6 was announced and we dont know anything about its release. This isnt uncommon and i can quote one game that will sum it up. Starcraft ghost. If the game comes through then great ill even play it, but so far i see a game 2 years out and a dev thats got a history of vaporware and raking in millions of dollars while promising people ingame content for said items.

Building ships to size and fit on earth is just wrong with dealing in space, the reason ships in space are so big is cus its space, your not limited to earth or gravity, Sorry but small ships like this have no place in space and would get dominated by any hostile force with a clue. Fun fact so far aircraft carriers are larger than every ship cept for one announced for SC so far.

Just cus a ships large doesnt mean it needs more people. Larger ship can mean larger batterys not more complicated, Larger generators, more armor, lots of armor, Larger engines.

It seems to be looking at a discussion around fantasy universes
"there're not enough mages!" "mages do not have enough powerful spells!" "wtf, look at Faerun, mages are teh shit there"

Different universe and backstory -> different rules and yes as a consequence different ships sizes.
This means that the classification of the ships based on size is different as well as this is a different universes from star wars, star trek, eve online etc etc etc so yes a supercapital is only 1 km in star citizen as this is the size of the supercapitals in this universe

As the backstory of the Star Citizen universe influenced the ships to be this size.

would get dominated by any hostile force with a clue

Hold no water as all the civilizations in the game probably have all ships of similar sizes so even in case of war, it will still be war on equal term.

Last edited by Brazorf; 2013-10-20 at 10:04 AM.

Originally Posted by Murdos

If X is % better then Y, Y is bad. I hate that concept with the searing, burning unfathomable energy of a collapsing supergiant.

Hold no water as all the civilizations in the game probably have all ships of similar sizes so even in case of war, it will still be war on equal term.

I dobut that unless they are purposely made like that to be equal. SC ships seem to be designed around planetary scale instead of extraplanetary scale. Think on terms of the planet and you are limiting yourself. Im also sorry but when current sea based ships have more tonnage than futuristic starships thats just plain sad.

that's what background and story is all about, defining rules around for the universe you're about to create. That's also why it is one of the first things that is decided in a game before starting the actual design.

Those sea based ships do not have the trouble to bring all that extra tonnage out of the atmosphere and battle gravity. Also what you see a "limitation" is a specific and deliberate style and design choice from the devs as I hardly doubt that they are unable to come out with bigger ships if they want to

Last edited by Brazorf; 2013-10-20 at 11:09 AM.

Originally Posted by Murdos

If X is % better then Y, Y is bad. I hate that concept with the searing, burning unfathomable energy of a collapsing supergiant.

In Star Citizen these are the capital ship types that have been confirmed...

Frigate
Destroyer
Cruiser
Escort Carrier
Bengal Carrier
Battlecruiser

The thing is that those ships are going to be hard to get (since it is military hardware the military won't sell those type of ships, you'll more than likely have to steal it) and even if you do get one you'll have to be able to crew it full time 24/7 or hide them since those ships can't be saved in a hangar when you log off.

The thing is that those ships are going to be hard to get (since it is military hardware the military won't sell those type of ships, you'll more than likely have to steal it) and even if you do get one you'll have to be able to crew it full time 24/7 or hide them since those ships can't be saved in a hangar when you log off.

What ? Sounds lame. No way it stays like this to release, I don't see any reason why anyone would like this.

What ? Sounds lame. No way it stays like this to release, I don't see any reason why anyone would like this.

Because they're a very powerfull asset, not to mention the number players can get is very limited in number. If you don't like it, that's fine, the developers are making the game they want to make, since they aren't beholden to any investors or a publisher, and they are trying to appeal to the more hardcore crowd.

Also, people keep forgetting, players can set up their own private server like in Minecraft or Terraria so you aren't restricted to just the official servers.